5 Months Out

How in the world did we get here?  5 months since Brynna passed away.  5 months since we were supposed to come home with our sweet baby girl, but instead came home with empty arms.  How could we have gotten here? 

After Steven and I returned from our cruise with Matt and Rita in the middle of March, I had about a 9 day stretch of being “on the closet floor” sad.  I couldn’t put any cohesive thoughts together, and had zero motivation for anything.  My heart was breaking all over again with how permanent this situation is.  I was hurting so much.

Then one day, I don’t know how else to put it, but I woke up one morning and I felt the waters had receded just enough that I could breathe once more.  I am not naïve to think that another long wave is not coming.  I know it is.  I know it will come again when I am not expecting it, and when I am least ready.  And I will be taken again, under the dark waters of heartbreak and despair.  I will cry and I will moan (probably on my closet floor), and I will plead for mercy, as I try to “come to grips” with the loss of our daughter.

But what I know now, is that I will again rise.  I will be granted another moment’s relief, and a chance to catch my breath.  Although this ocean of grief is our new life, and at times it seems there is no land in site, no respite; I will not drown.  We will not drown.  We will not succumb to the sadness forever. Steven and the boys and I will not drown in our heartache.  Instead, we will continue to do what we have been doing for the past 5 months.  We will cling to one another, our own makeshift life raft and we will roll with the waves.

The pain of surviving the death of your child is so deep and so indescribable that I have given up trying to put words to it.  There is a saying that I found a while back that states just that:

“A child that loses a parent is an orphan.

 A husband that loses his wife is a widower.

 A wife who loses her husband is a widow.

 However, there is no word for a parent that loses a child.

 For there is no word to describe such pain.”

However, I have a lifeline to help me not “out of” but “through” my pain.  My amazing husband, and my three compassionate boys are my relief.  They are my reality check.  They are my reasons for living. 

We will love Brynna until the end of time (and then one more day after that), and we will do it together.